To James Madison from Charles Johnston, 4 April 1826
From Charles Johnston
Botetourt Springs April 4. 1826
Sir
In compliance with the wishes of my friends and my own inclination I am about publishing a narrative of my Capture and detention by the Indians as a prisoner in the year 17901 in which I have had the assistance of a friend much more competent to such an undertaking than I can pretend to be. The Work is in considerable forwardness but will not be ready for the press for some time yet to come. In the mean while I have put forth proposals for publishing it by subscription. Having the pleasure of a slight acquaintance with you and Knowing you to be a friend of American Literature in which I cannot but flatter myself this work will hold some thing like a respectable station I am induced to take the liberty of inclosing you one of my subscription papers for the purpose of obtaining your signature thereto should you think fit to honour me therewith. As it is my intention to present you together with some other distinguished Gentlemen of my native state with a Copy elegantly bound and which I flatter myself you and them will not deem as unworthy a place in your Libraries, I must frankly declare that my object in asking this favour of you is to give effect by your name and character to the subscriptions which I mean to send to the different and distant parts of the United States where I am not known.
With this view of the subject should you think proper to favour my views so far as is now asked it will be considered as a high obligation Conferred on, Sir, Your most obedient & very Hble. Servt.
Ch Johnston2
Please return the paper directed to me at this place.
RC (DLC: Rives Collection, Madison Papers). Docketed by JM.
1. Charles Johnston, A Narrative of the Incidents Attending the Capture, Detention, and Ransom of Charles Johnston, of Botetourt County, Virginia: Who Was Made Prisoner by the Indians, on the River Ohio, in the Year 1790 […] (New York, 1827; 29372).
2. Charles Johnston (1769–1833) was a Richmond merchant before moving to Campbell County, Virginia, in 1808. In the early 1820s he purchased a mineral spring near Fincastle, Virginia, and built a hotel and cottages he called Botetourt Springs that became a fashionable summer resort (Looney et al., Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, 2:230 n.; Helen R. Prillaman, A Place Apart: A Brief History of the Early Williamson Road and North Roanoke Valley Residents and Places [Baltimore, 1997], 83).